
You are here

Topics:
Expertise
Development economics, globalism and inequality, the aid system, international financial institutions, education, Latin America, climate financing
Bio
Nancy Birdsall is president emeritus and a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development, a policy-oriented research institution that opened its doors in Washington, DC in October 2001. Prior to launching the center, Birdsall served for three years as senior associate and director of the Economic Reform Project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Her work at Carnegie focused on issues of globalization and inequality, as well as on the reform of the international financial institutions.
From 1993 to 1998, Birdsall was executive vice-president of the Inter-American Development Bank, the largest of the regional development banks, where she oversaw a $30 billion public and private loan portfolio. Before joining the Inter-American Development Bank, she spent 14 years in research, policy, and management positions at the World Bank, most recently as director of the Policy Research Department.
Birdsall is the author, co-author, or editor of more than a dozen books and monographs, including, The Development Agenda as a Global Social Contract: Or We Are All in this Development Boat Together, The White House and the World: A Global Development Agenda for the Next U.S. President, and Fair Growth: Economic Policies for Latin America's Poor and Middle-Income Majority. She has also written more than 75 articles for books and scholarly journals published in English and Spanish. Shorter pieces of her writing have appeared in dozens of US and Latin American newspapers and periodicals.
Birdsall has been researching and writing on economic development issues for more than 25 years. Her most recent work focuses on the relationship between income distribution and economic growth and the role of regional public goods in development.
Birdsall is a member of the Board of Directors of the International Food Policy Research Council (IFPRI), of the African Population and Health Research Center, and of Mathematica. She has chaired the board of the International Center for Research on Women and has served on the boards of the Social Science Research Council, Overseas Development Council, and Accion. She has also served on committees and working groups of the National Academy of Sciences.
Birdsall holds a PhD in economics from Yale University and an MA in international relations from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.
Click here for Google Scholar page
Books
- Population Matters: Demographic Change, Economic Growth and Poverty in the Developing World, edited with Allen C. Kelleyand Steven W. Sinding (Oxford University Press, 2001)
- New Markets, New Opportunities? Economic and Social Mobility in a Changing World with Carol Graham (Brookings and Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1999)
- Distributive Justice and Economic Development with Andres Solimano and Eduardo Aninat (University of Michigan Press, 1999)
- Beyond Tradeoffs: Market Reforms and Equitable Growth in Latin America with Carol Graham and Richard H. Sabot (1998)
Papers and Articles
- Education and the MDGS: Realizing the Millennium Compact, by Nancy Birdsall and Milan Vaishnav. Reprinted by permission of the Columbia Journal of International Affairs (Spring 2005). Copyright 2005, The Trustees of Columbia University in the City of New York.
- The World Bank of the Future: Victim, Villain, Global Credit Union? Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. October 2000
- Stuck In The Tunnel: Is Globalization Muddling The Middle Class? by Nancy Birdsall, Carol Graham, and Stefano Pettinato, The Brookings Institution Center on Social and Economic Dynamics, Working Paper No. 14, August 2000
-
Education: the Peoples Asset
The Brookings Institution Center on Social and Economic Dynamics Working Paper Number 5. September 1999. - Putting Education to Work in Egypt, by Nancy Birdsall and Lesley O'Connell. Prepared for Conference, Growth Beyond Stabilization: Prospects for Egypt, sponsored by The Egyptian Center for Economic Studies in collaboration with the Center for Institutional Reform and the Informal Sector, University of Maryland; the Harvard Institute for International Development, and the US Agency for International Development, February 3-4, 1999, Cairo, Egypt. March 1999.
Contributions to Edited Volumes
- "América Latina y la Globalización: Prebisch Tenía Razón," in Raul Prebisch: El poder, los Principios y la Ética del Desarrollo edited by Edgar J. Dosman. (IADB, 2006)
- "Intergenerational Mobility in Latin America: Deeper Markets and Better Schools Make a Difference," with Jere R. Behrman and Miguel Szekely, in New Markets, New Opportunities? Economic and Social Mobility in a Changing World (1999)
- "The U.S. and the Social Challenge in Latin America: The New Agenda Needs New Instruments," with Nora Lustig and Lesley O'Connell, in The Search for Common Ground: U.S. National Interests and the Western Hemisphere in a New Century (W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1999)
- "Deep Integration and Trade Agreements: Good for Developing Countries?" with Robert Z. Lawrence in Global Public Goods: International Cooperation in the 21st Century (Oxford University Press, 1999)
- "No Tradeoff: Efficient Growth Via More Equal Human Capital Accumulation in Latin America," in Beyond Trade-Offs: Market Reforms and Equitable Growth in Latin America (1998)
Articles:
- "That Silly Inequality Debate," in Foreign Policy, May/June 2002
- "Education in Latin America: Demand and Distribution are Factors that Matter," with Juan Luis Londoño and Lesley O'Connell in CEPAL Review 66, December 1998
- "Life is Unfair: Inequality in the World," in Foreign Policy, Summer 1998
- "Public Spending on Higher Education in Developing Countries: Too Much or Too Little?" in Economics of Education Review, 1996
More From Nancy Birdsall
Critics allege that the World Bank is deeply flawed. Yet the world needs a strong World Bank to help manage development and the related global challenges of the 21st century. Do the Bank's shortcomings put its future at risk? If so, can the Bank be rescued? Rescuing the World Bank, a new book that includes a CGD working group report and selected essays edited by CGD president Nancy Birdsall, offers timely perspectives on challenges that are crucial to the Bank’s future success.
Just telling adolescent girls in Kenya that the older the man the more likely he is to be HIV infected reduced the in
Pages
This blog post originally appeared on CGD's Views from the Center blog.
I am pleased to announce that CGD has expanded its work in monitoring U.S. foreign assistance. Sheila Herrling, whom many of you know from her wonderful stewardship of our MCA Monitor, has been named Director, Monitoring Foreign Assistance Program and will be managing our Rethinking U.S. Foreign Assistance Program, a one-stop shop for information, dialogue and analysis on the progress and challenges in modernizing U.S. foreign assistance.
In my first dispatch from Davos, I observed that the atmosphere was upbeat.
Commentary Menu